Are You Taking Too Many Dietary Supplements?

August 31, 2019

Thank you for checking out my video. I’m going
to do a little video today on too many dietary supplements. I see so many patients; I see
them all the time, whether they’re on Skype, they come into my clinic or on the telephone
or maybe through face time on Mac. Lots and lots of clients who show me so many dietary
supplements that they’ve got from one, two, three, five, or ten doctors, naturopaths,
chiropractors. Some people are put on way too much stuff.
Here’s an article out of my book, Candida Crusher. Some yeast infected patients take
over two dozen products, so I’m just going to read a bit out of the book here. It all
begins with one product recommended by a website, a magazine, a health food shop, a friend or
a doctor or a naturopath like me, and after a few years, the products just keep on coming.
Then you’re thinking, “I’ll try this one for my digestion. Well, this one will make me
sleep better” and the list goes on, and soon you have so many supplements you can’t keep
them all on your benchtop. And they’ve got to go in a cupboard somewhere or in a drawer
and they start taking up a lot of room. Have you ever worked out the daily cost of
this to you? How much is this all costing? Some patients spend $2,000, $3,000, $4,000
a month on supplements. It’s madness. Absolute madness. I believe that the more product the
person takes, the more product focused they will eventually become, and these are people
that are symptom treaters because they go to doctors or naturopaths that are symptom
prescribers. “Oh, you’ve got sore joints, take this product. You’ve got a sleeping problem;
take this product. You don’t feel good; take St. John’s Wort. You’re knees are playing
up, take glucosamine. You’ve got a sniffle, take Vitamin C.” Before you know it, they’ve
got a whole table full of this crap. It’s ridiculous.
“This one’s for my digestion.” This was a lady that actually told me, “This one’s for
my bones. This one’s for my joints. This one’s for pain. One for eyes. One for libido. One
for hot flashes. This one’s to stop me from getting a cold. This one’s for my urinary
tract infections. This is my magnesium supplement. This one’s for my constipation. This one’s
to help me lose weight,” etc. This lady took 37 dietary supplements. You work that one
out, 37 dietary supplements. That’s just crazy. I wrote here; imagine having to take all of
that in one day, not to mention the cost of it. But the interesting thing is when I asked
her how she felt on this regime of 37 supplements, what do you think she said? She said, “I feel
like crap!” And then she said, “Dr. Bakker, what do I do? I’m taking all these supplements.”
And I said, “Go and get yourself a waste paper basket and throw the whole lot in.” [What?]
And I said, “You’re feeling like crap anyway, so what’s the difference? Let’s just start
over again. Let’s just tackle the most important thing that’s wrong with you right now and
see if we can help you with that. But spending all your money on all these pills is not going
to fix all your ills.” Can you relate to that? Can you relate to
taking a supplement from your health food shop, a supplement from your naturopath, a
supplement that your friend told you about, then you got a mail order catalog and you
bought a couple more products, then you went to some blog site and you read something else
and you bought that. And before you know it, you have 15 products. You don’t need to do
this. You really don’t need to do this. When I evaluate patients and their supplements,
I’ll often stop them on a whole lot of stuff. I prefer patients to take one or two quality
items, exactly what they need at that point in time and focus more on their diet and lifestyle
instead of taking pills. Lots of people in my business have become like green doctors.
They basically prescribe people supplements just like a doctor would prescribe supplements
for symptoms, but you don’t need to do that. I hope that enlightens you today. Thank you
for tuning in.

I dunno if you'll respond to this, but what about supplements that someone like might be on because blood tests show I am low on it if I go off it cause my diet is crap. I don't have access to fresh or a variety of food do to a physical disability, (and no sunshine), so I'm on like a multi vit, calcium +E, vit D, and then a high dose of magnesium cause of epilepsy… Is it bad to regularly take these? I eat healthy meal when I am able to actually get up and prepare something, but that is rare….